The Court and the Opera

T hough a more oddly assorted quartett of authorities could hardly be picked out than Voltaire, Dr. Burney, Zelter, and the author of the “Ramble among the Musicians of Germany,”— each of them gives his drachma or his mite of information to those who sought the causes of the state of Berlin Opera in 1839 in this past history. From the philosopher-courtier, the friend of Johnson and Garrick, the worshipper of Goethe, and the pleasant man of modern art and letters, who mingled in his speculations the Hummels of Germany and the Hunts of Cockayne with a graceful and good-humoured individuality, we learn different parts of one and the same history. But a little way up the Linden Strasse stood the magnificent Opera House, where all the splendours of the French musical drama were exhibited under the nominal direction of M. le Chevalier Spontini. Though its interior decorations were faded when I saw it in 1839, it seemed to me the handsomest and best proportioned theatre I ever entered; large without vastness, and having that habitable look which is indispensable to the comfort of a place of public amusement, and, perhaps, unattainable in such a building as the Schauspiel Haus, where classical rigour of style is attempted.